The result of the curriculum aspect of our content strategy is this: A World Unbroken: Hope and Healing for a Shattered World.  The entire curriculum has three major components: 1) A book for youth workers designed to help them re-narrate their lives around the mission of God.  2) A creative devotional experience for students.  The experience consists of approximately one school year worth of content.  Each day has three prayers (morning, midday and evening) and two missional activities — one for humanity and one for the environment.  3) A DVD with seven short films and discussion guides.  You can view a mash-up of all 7 videos below:

The online content strategy resulted in this interactive website: www.aworldunbroken.com

The national gathering is this week!  I am in Louisville right now gearing up to host nearly 7000 high school students and youth workers at the YUM Center.  I will speaking on Wed night and hosting the entire week with my friend Brooklyn Lindsey as co-emcees.

I’ve spent the last two years pouring my life into trying to discover the best ways to help youth workers guide students into spiritual formation for the mission of God. I’m excited to see not only how this gathering comes off but how the content will be used after to inspire students to participate with God in restoring the world to its intended wholeness.

NOTE: Many of you have asked if this content (curriculum, websites, etc.) will work for your ministry if you don’t attend the event. The answer is YES! I think you’ll love this content. I also think it will tremendously help you as you guide and direct students and adult leaers in your church and community into the mission of God.

Tic has been accessible to all of us over the years, a great friend to many of us and a mentor to a few of us.  Much of the recent growth and momentum of Barefoot can be attributed to Tic’s brief but very effective role as a consultant to Barefoot (in between the time he was released by Zondervan and taking the Exec Dir role at YS/Youthworks!).

I remember Tic telling me a couple of years ago just before he re-joined YS, “I don’t think I am the future of YS.  I don’t know who is, but this thing can’t just go away.  I can help YS by being a bridge to the future.” He has certainly done that and very effectively.

I’ve known Mark for a bunch of years.  I can’t remember when and where we first met but since meeting Mark we’ve developed a working and personal relationship.  Mark is an innovator.  He is a futurist.  He is a thinker.  But before any  of that, Mark is a faithful father and husband, a volunteer youth worker and an active participant in his community.  Who knows where YS will go — but I’m confident that Mark’s leadership will provide YS will a healthy and effective future of serving youth workers and youth ministries around the globe.

The essence of Jesus’ moral vision is this: His followers are to love God and to love others with everything they’ve got. Love is not one of the virtues but the essence and summary of all virtue.  Scot calls this double commandment to love “The Jesus Creed.” We can’t wait until we’re adults to begin loving God and loving others and this book calls students to engage the Jesus Creed today!

In The Jesus Creed for Students we work out the Jesus Creed for high school and college students, seeking to show how it makes sense, giving shape to the moral lives of young adults.

The Jesus Creed for Students is practical, filled with stories, backed up and checked by youth pastors, and it includes discussion questions for further study.

To get one for free all you have to do is be one of the first 50 to request it from jesuscreedstudents@paracletepress.com (with name/mailing address/blog provided) and commit to blog about it.

The Youth Ministry Coaching Program is a whole-life yearlong coaching program for youth workers. Deeply rooted in the idea that a healthy, growing, learning youth worker will stay longer and have a deeper impact for the Kingdom, YMCP constantly returns participants to the formation and expansion of personal and ministry core values.

The cohort approach allows for 360-degrees of input. The lead coach acts as facilitator and guide on this journey; but the other youth workers in the cohort will become friends and co-conspirators, as you will be for each of them. We’ll wrestle with a wide variety of youth ministry subjects, but will also process spiritual, relational, and emotional growth, in a context of safety, honesty, and real life application and accountability.

In the coming weeks I will be offering more details but for now go HERE to learn more about the program.  You can also watch this video for a peak into an actual cohort: Youth Ministry Coaching Program Video

Stay tuned for more information (dates, locations, etc.) in the coming weeks!

I am thrilled to be contributing (along with my good friend Erik Leafblad) to the development of a new digital small group resource by Beacon Hill Press called, Missio.  For years I have been dreaming about a multi-year resource that is based on the approach of missional formation I wrote about in my book Story, Signs and Sacred Rhythms.

I am thrilled about this new resource (Year 1 is available on July 1, 2011) for many reasons.  One reason in particular is that there is an intentional strategy of developing spiritual practices for every age level. I will be sharing more on Missio in the days ahead but for now you can go visit missiolife.com and connect with our progress and updates.

We pay great for great ideas, good for good ideas and okay for okay ideas (only ideas that fit our mission to help youth workers guide students into spiritual formation for the mission of God will be considered).

We (Barefoot and The House Studio) have traditionally been a acquisitions based and we still are pursuing resources that support our training and publishing initiatives all the time.  I’d love to accept, however, a few more of your idea submissions in the coming days.

So if you are a youth worker in a church or other non-traditional youth ministry setting or you lead an organization of some sort that is in line with our mission, I’d love to take look at your ideas.  Give me a summary of your idea HERE.  You can see some of what we have done in the past HERE and HERE.

I’ve been praying this prayer everyday since the start of the new year.  Would you pray this prayer for today’s youth with me?

…Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices. Help them to know
how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of
truth and healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and
courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory
or failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world
may bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but
for joy, and that joy is to him alone who, sometimes with tears in his eyes, commits himself in love to
thee and his brothers. Lead them and all thy world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all men
are one and that there can never really be joy for any until there is joy for all. In Christ’s name we ask
it and for his sake. Amen.

- Frederick Beuchner, The Hungering Dark, page 33

I’ve been thinking a bunch lately about how we help our students best understand the Church and its work in the mission of God. I have received several recent emails in which youth workers have expressed a deep concern for their students understanding of the church.

Can the students in your youth ministry describe the nature of the Church? Do your students recognize the role of the Church in the mission of God? Are your students able to identify with the biblical metaphors of the Church? All of these questions are born out of the concerns that I have heard youth workers repeatedly expressing. As we are all aware there has been a great deal of dialogue surrounding the data concluding that students are ‘leaving the church’ upon the completion of high school with no plans to return. I’ve heard many reasons as to the cause of this great challenge we face ranging from the increased level of apathy of students (which I don’t think is in anyway the primary reason) to the abandonment of today’s youth by both culture and the Church to a myriad of other suggested causes that are in some way connected to the inability and desire for local churches to embrace change and new practices.

I’m not an expert on the issue of what is so often thought of as the most daunting challenge facing the church today — that being the mass exit of emerging adults. For all I know there may be dozens of causes that have led to this challenge. So I don’t proclaim my absolute conclusions. I do, however, have a hunch. My hunch is that many of our students, as a result of not knowing the Bible’s story, haven’t been guided toward an understanding of the work of the church in the mission of God and therefore have no framework for or devotion to the church and its nature and work.

What is your hunch as to the cause of such a challenge? Maybe you have more than a hunch; you have a conclusion? If so, what have you concluded and what might the church do differently to cultivate a passion for the church among emerging adults?

Perhaps a great starting point for our students is to help them see the Church as a people who are about conversion, community and conformity.

> By conversion I mean that the Church is to be a people concerned about evangelism, hospitality, generosity, liberation and formation.

> By community I mean that the Church is to be a people concerned about providing a sense of belonging, responsibility, inspiration, sharing, diversity and inclusivity.

> By conformity I mean that the Church is to be a people concerned about their desire to form spiritually. That is, a community that is consistently seeking to arrange its personal and communal lives around the mission of God, the person and work of Jesus, submission to the gifts and roles of the Holy Spirit in order t become a people full of grace and dedicated to the healing of all people through salvation and justice.

What else might we consider as part of the framework to help students best understand the nature and work of the Church? As far as you are concerned, do you feel like the Church is doing a good job helping emerging adults understand the Church? How might the Church improve in its efforts?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been in some terrific conversations about youth ministry and evangelism.  One youth worker from a church in Toronto asked me, “Where did evangelism go?  It seems as though evangelism is way less important as it was 10 years ago when I began working with teens and their families.”  I responded by asking this youth worker, “Is it less important to you?”  “No!” He shouted back.  He continued by saying, “It isn’t less important, I just don’t know how to do it these days!  Students are just so different.”

Personally, I don’t think that youth ministry has forgotten about evangelism or that it is less important.  I do, however, wonder what it will take for us to feel like we know ‘how to do it these days’.  Maybe I am wrong.  Has evangelism become less important in youth ministry?  Or are our traditional methods no longer effective so we, therefore, await a more effective approach?  What might a more effective series of approaches look like? I have observed, from my limited vista, that youth ministry in North America has been making wonderful shifts.  I especially have enjoyed observing and participating in the shift from what is often labeled an attractional approach to what is commonly referred to as a missional approach.  Specifically, I have noticed that within this missional approach we have allowed our view of evangelism to be as much about embodiment as it is about proclamation.  This is good.  But, just like proclamation without embodiment is incomplete, so embodiment without proclamation is incomplete. Perhaps this is what my youth worker friend in Toronto meant by evangelism being of less importance.

I can’t quite wrap my arms all the way around the issues related to new perspectives on evangelism and that frustrates me.  However, I have come to personally conclude that the articulation of the gospel story today must be related to people’s lives — it cannot be just a rational argument.  The gospel story must be holistic in the sense that 1) it isn’t merely about the accumulation of knowledge and 2) it doesn’t separate the soul from body (and ultimately a Kingdom society).  To effectively and faithfully articulate the gospel story today it seems important to proclaim and embody it in a community that exists as a hermeneutic of the gospel. Too often the end is to make converts, not invite students into a community of disciples interested in the ongoing work of God’s transformation.

To this end, we have to also articulate how our students’ stories connect with the story of God. Evangelism includes helping students see themselves in light of the imago Dei, helping them discover their identity and calling. In what ways can we more deeply connect our students’ stories to the imago Dei?  What do we need to start doing, stop doing or do differently in youth ministry to guide a generation to articulate the gospel story in both action and word?  How do we train and equip our students to articulate the gospel story?

I’m confidant that youth ministers will collectively continue to pray, think, converse, practice and trust our way toward a more holistic approach to youth ministry.   A holistic approach marked by 1) a commitment to our own ongoing spiritual discovery and growth, 2) a more generous theological scaffold in which to guide our students into spiritual formation and an additional thorough devotion to engage God’s mission to restore the world to its intended wholeness.

Consider the following 12 areas in which we can all help each other progress even further in 2011 and beyond:

1-    Anti-individualism – Let’s do every thing we can to keep moving away from an individualistic approach to spiritual formation and yet keep faith personal.  Individualistic Christianity de-personalizes the faith.

2-    A Bigger View of God – I’m thrilled that we have been able to make progress in helping people see a bigger view of God through Scripture, culture and our faith communities.  It’d be wonderful to push the boundaries even further and help our students catch sight of God in incomprehensible ways.

3-    Starting with Experience – I appreciate our recent efforts to allow for postmodern people to engage with God though the convergence of thier own experiences with God and people rather than from imposition placed on others by the people of God.  Encouraging people in the faith through experience has tremendously increased our faculty for guiding people toward living and loving in the way of Jesus.

4-    The Power and Possibility of Story – I hope that youth ministers will continue to lean into story (narrative theology and practice) as a means of helping people discover God’s mission to restore the world.  Thinking and living “in story” forms the prophetic imagination needed to paint a living rendering for students to see the intended ways of God.

5-    Becoming Culturists – Making culture is much better than consuming it, right?  I’m hopeful that youth ministers will continue to see their role to exegete their community in order to contextualize and impart the gospel in more expressive ways.

6-    Holistic church – We’ve made a lot of progress as it relates to moving out beyond age as the classification of youth ministry and we’ve begun to see the importance of youth ministers serving the entire family.  I pray that we’ll become even more convinced that youth ministers are ministers not only to youth but ministers to a church family who maybe just spend most of their time with youth.

7-    Environmentalism – I can’t believe how far we have progressed when it comes to recognizing the importance of the environment in which we practice and guide students into the mission of God.  The youth worker as environmentalist is a reality for many (Mike King has done great work on this!).  However, I would love to see even more youth workers concerned with time, space and matter and the need to create transformative environments.

8-     Quality vs. quantity – when we measure in quality we measure with the highest conceivable in mind.  When we measure in quantity we measure with the minimum in mind.  It makes much more sense to me that we measure our effectiveness with the highest conceivable in mind, no?

9-    Kairos vs. Chronos – A lot of youth ministers I know have stopped caring about and no longer allow themselves to be governed by chronos time or time that is dividable such as hours, minutes and seconds.  Most youth ministers are eagerly embracing karios time which can’t be divided or seen in duration but instead is time as it relates to what Madeleine L’Engle called, A Wrinkle in Time or God’s time – when and where God decides. For the intensity of the Sprit to be realized.

10- Transformation Not Change – Change is inevitable, transformation is not.  Transformation is about opening up new dimensions of the soul – it’s a square transforming into a cube, revealing new and other dimensions.  I trust that youth ministers will choose not to settle for change in their students’ lives but instead, hope, pray and expect transformation to happen.

11- Communal Hermeneutics – We need to continue in our efforts to move passed reading the Scripture to our students and instead help them develop a hermeneutic that teaches them how to read the Scriptures for themselves.  And even beyond that, we need to help students develop the practice of interpreting the scripture in community allowing for God to speak through the imagination and the truth discovered by others.

12- Unrelenting Trust – I love that youth ministers are talking more and more about trusting the way of a pilgrim – that God is leading through the Sprit and we wander along ready to join the activity of God as God moves, not as we calculate our own plans and steps.  I hope we’ll discover even greater levels of trust in the Holy Spirit.

I love what is happening in youth ministry.  The enduring renovation is inspiring and challenging to say the least.  I pray that each of us might consider what we can more deeply commit to in 2011 and beyond — for the sake of the world.